The present invention relates generally to the field of hose reinforcement and more particularly, relates to an apparatus for applying multiple reinforcing wraps to a flexible hose construction.
Flexible hose for conducting fluids under high pressures with little or no increase in length or volume of the hose have found wide application in industry. Prior workers in the art have developed reinforced hose having layers of wound yarn, metallic ribbons or other fibers or fabrics which have usually been applied as superimposed layers over a flexible hose core. Most often, resilient materials such as rubber sheeting or a thermoplastic sheet have been applied intermediate the various reinforcing wraps. U.S. Pat. Nos. 790,906 834,074, 1,010,088, 1,726,957, 2,047,770, 3,212,528, 3,357,456, 3,504,461, 3,729,028 and 3,866,633 show various types of hose reinforcement of the multi-layer type. These prior art reinforced hoses have generally proved satisfactory when in use, but have usually proved so complicated in construction as to render the cost thereof unusually high when considering the cost of the materials and the nature of the final product produced.
Some of the prior art patents above cited and U.S. Pat. No. 3,586,558, of which I am also aware teach methods of continuously manufacturing reinforced hose of the general type produced by the present invention. U.S. Pat. No. 3,586,558 discloses the use of a plurality of reinforcement applying machines in juxtaposed relationship, each of which carries a plurality of spools on which are wound yarns of which the reinforcement is continuously formed. The use of multiple knitting heads is also shown in my pending application Ser. No. 496,865, filed Aug. 12, 1974, entitled "Reinforced Hose," which discloses a machine capable of producing a multi-layer reinforcing upon a flexible hose.
All of the prior art machines, including my own, of which I am familiar, mount the yarn carrying bobbins on one side of the bobbin table only to thereby definitely limit the number of yarns that can be wound by a single machine. When additional yarn wraps have previously been required, the bobbin tables had to be constructed of larger diameter to accommodate the desired number of bobbins. This increased bobbin table diameter resulted in larger machines, larger power requirements to operate the machines, all of which combined to greatly increase the initial capital cost of the machinery.